You are trapped on a desert island with the Spice Girls. Food and rum have run out. Which Spice Girl do you eat first?

The Ginger Spice

The Sporty Spice

The Tall Spice

The Relatively Posh Spice

The Baby Spice

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Chase me, ladies, I'm in the cavalry

Thursday, March 25, 2010

RUM: NOT JUST FOR RIFF-RAFF ANYMORE

“You remember that I asked whether whisky and brandy were in the cabin. You said they were. How many landsmen are there who would drink rum when they could get these other spirits? Yes, I was certain it was a seaman."Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of Black Peter

When you think of brandy, you probably picture a St Bernard (dog) rescuing a man in a snowdrift. When you think of whisky, you perhaps think of ghillies, whatever they are, shooting grouse in their gentlemen’s club. When you think of rum, you probably imagine a Central American peasant lying face down in a ditch, or sailors fighting in Plymouth.

Rum has an image problem, but they’ve put their top marketing people on it, and are re-launching it as a luxury product, the kind of thing that oil traders and secret agents can drink on their golfing holidays. I was invited to a tasting of Zacapa, the best -or at any rate the most expensive- rum in the world. It is produced 2,300 metres above sea level in the mountains of Guatemala, said their salesman. Well, well.

They gave me the 23-year old Zacapa, with its rich dark flavours, the mystery of the Guatemalan highlands in every sip. Twenty-three years ago Guatemala was having a civil war which left 200,000 dead, but the rum seems to have escaped unscathed, thank God.

Anyway, so I bought a bottle. It was a lot of money, but I am a man who appreciates the finer things in life. I didn’t have much to do next day, so I drank it in my underpants, while playing Mike Tyson’s Super Punch-Out.